January 31, 2002
Celebrating Henry: Revered art gallery reaches milestone anniversary
| Steve Hill |
| University Week |
While preparing for the festivities surrounding the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Henry Art Gallery, Richard Andrews can’t help but be moved by the generosity of the facility’s namesake.
“What I admire tremendously about a man I never met is his foresight and his sense of civic responsibility,” Andrews, director of the Henry Gallery, said recently from his office in the building’s 1997 addition. “To spend years collecting this art and then to give it to someone along with money to build a museum — that’s an incredible gift.”
The community is set to celebrate a milestone anniversary for Washington’s first public art gallery with a weekend full of activities scheduled for Feb. 8–10. A campus celebration is planned for 11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 8 in the gallery. The event will include complimentary food and music, special gifts and giveaways, tours, and 75-cent coffee and cider in the gallery’s Baci Café. Events are planned for the public at large on Saturday and Sunday, too.
The generosity Horace C. Henry displayed more than 75 years ago in declaring his gift of 172 valuable pieces of art and the money to build the museum wasn’t without precedent. Years before the gallery bearing his name opened on the UW campus, Henry was opening his Capitol Hill home and private art collection to the public. He even built a small gallery adjacent to his home that was open to the public every Wednesday and Sunday.
But when the Henry Gallery opened its Tudor-Gothic doors for the first time on Feb. 10, 1927, Henry had set the wheels in motion for what continues to be an influential museum with a national reputation for excellence and innovation. The Blue Four Exhibition, for example, opened with the museum and provided the Pacific Northwest its first glimpse of European expressionism.
“When it opened, European expressionism was pretty radical stuff,” Andrews said. “And it’s just been a steady diet of wonderful exhibitions of art and design ever since.”
In fact, the Henry was the first museum in the region to present the work of Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. But at the same time that it challenges the most serious art enthusiasts, it has become a welcoming place where freshmen ripe for new experiences can feel safe in their first brush with sophisticated art exhibitions.
That is even more the case today, almost five years after the completion of a $17.5 million renovation that gave the gallery an additional 46,000 square feet of new space that includes well lit below-ground galleries. The expansion included a 150-seat auditorium, a multimedia gallery, expanded education and research facilities, a museum shop and the Baci Café.
Perhaps most importantly it gave the gallery a more modern, open and welcoming look. Where once it had looked distinguished and perhaps even stuffy to an audience that oftentimes has no previous exposure to art, today ground-to-ceiling windows at the entrance give an airy, inviting quality that continues inside the gallery.
But as significant as the addition continues to be, perhaps the most important moment in the gallery’s first 75 years was the formation of the Henry Gallery Association in February 1968. It started as a modest group of friends to the gallery and has grown into the Henry’s major source of funding. About 80 percent of the gallery’s $3 million annual operating budget now comes from the association.
“It’s an absolutely fundamental relationship,” Andrews said. “We literally could not exist without the Henry Gallery Association.”
Board member Maggie Walker says Fifi Caner, who served a long tenure as the board president, first energized support for the association. And once people got involved in the association, they grew increasingly devoted, Walker said.
“The wonderful thing about the Henry has been that it’s a smaller institution and people could really feel involved in what’s going on,” she said. “It’s always been a really lively and engaged board. We’ve always really had our sleeves rolled up.”
Prior to 1968 the Henry was run by the School of Art on a modest budget. Funds still flow from the UW to help operate the facility, but the School of Art’s and the University’s role is more along the lines of intellectual collaborator.
In fact, by focusing on contemporary art, the gallery’s curators often find themselves rubbing shoulders with a variety of departments. In April the Henry will open the exhibition Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, which has led to collaborations with the Department of Genome Sciences.
Andrews says such partnerships are an important part of the gallery. After all, he says, it’s a university art gallery and should have an element of experimentation.
“At best, it should be kind of an adventure to come to the Henry,” Andrews said.
